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Noriko Korura (#23) plays running back for the Sacramento Sirens in the Independent Women's Football League (IWFL). (Image courtesy of www.l-project.net)

The year was 1998 and the Denver Broncos were playing the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXII. The game was one every fan watching from home would always remember, some for different reasons than others. For one girl, the reason would be because it turned her life around.

Kaz Nagatsuka, a staff writer for The Japan Times published a phenomenal story on Monday morning, an excerpt of it can be read below:

After the game, Noriko Kokura was going to end her life. But she stopped, because she found a ray of hope through the game of football.

Or more precisely, through a player.

While harboring that feeling (of taking her own life), she watched Super Bowl XXXII between the Denver Broncos and Green Bay Packers, sitting in front of a TV set along with her father, like they had done every year since she was in elementary school.

Kokura, then in her final year of junior high school, had an eye-opening experience. She was intrigued by the Broncos’ ace running back, Terrell Davis. Her heart was moved to see Davis building such tight bonds with his teammates on the field.

“His game sent a ray of light into my heart,” Kokura said in an e-mail interview. “I’d seen so many games before, but I’d never seen a player believing in his teammates that much. And his teammates believed in him too.” From that moment on, she abandoned the idea of killing herself.